L’Étranger appeared in 1942 and its first translation was published in 1946. The second translation came out in 1982, and the third in 1988. It is pretty rare for a contemporary novel to be translated three times within the forty years following its publication. Referring to a famous statement by Goethe on retranslation, the author examines whether the three successive translations of L’Étranger conform to the ideal of an increasingly close reproduction of the original and especially of its foreign flavour. Goethe’s view on translation has survived and has been revisited more recently by Lawrence Venuti, who favours a binary opposition of translation (domestication vs. foreignisation). The author examines whether Goethe’s theorem could be verified with the test of a concrete case of retranslation, organising his study along the main lines of Venuti’s statement.